Click here to download the cover of Petunia Garfunkel Learns to be Helpful.

About “Petunia Garfunkel Learns To Be Helpful”

“Petunia Garfunkel Learns to be helpful” is a bright and cheery picture book about being helpful.

Its beautiful hand illustrations make it both attractive and engaging. That, along with the rhymes, makes the lesson that is being learned, much lighter to bear.

Petunia Garfunkel is a little girl who is not very helpful. For one thing, she does not like to pick up after herself.  She makes a mess and expects others to clean up after her.

Other than cleaning up, she also does not care about being helpful in other ways. However, her messes and unhelpful nature is causing tension in her big family. As such, they decide to do an intervention.

Petunia realizes that everyone in the household has to do their part, no matter how small you are.

“Petunia Garfunkel Learns To Be Helpful” is a fun and delightful way of teaching children how to be helpful. It is also very heartwarming, as the family stands together to help each other. [amazon-button label=”Add to Cart”]

Inspiration for “Petunia Garfunkel Learns To Be Helpful”

I like a neat an tidy house. I believe that my whole family loves it too, but they are not very helpful in pursuing that endeavor – particularly my children.

My dearest mother-in-law told me once that “they’re being messy because you keep picking up after them.” She was right. They’d drop their socks anywhere, and leave it there for me to pick up. I’d then come prancing on behind them to clean up. That is insane, ridiculous, and does not help build a helpful character. I took her advice and decided that I was going to get my family to be more helpful in cleaning up after themselves. That didn’t quite work out as I had hoped because it turns out, they didn’t like helping out around the house. Particularly my son Remy.

But, every cloud has a silver lining because that period led to this book.

This book has been very helpful in our own house. Our children understand that they have to do their parts in order for the house to run successfully. But being helpful is not just about helping out in the house – it’s also about being helpful in life. Here’s a great article I found about how we can teach our kids to be nice and helpful.

“Petunia Garfunkel Learns To Be Helpful” is the first book in the series. I have written two more. Petunia Garfunkel learns to tell the truth, and Petunia Garfunkel learns about Manners, will be available in early 2018. I do plan on writing many more “stories that teach a lesson” because my children are giving me content to write about every day. I believe books that build character is important, so I’ll keep at it. If you have ideas for the Petunia Garfunkel series, definitely let me know – I’m always open to new ideas.

This book, and the others in the series, are illustrated by a wonderful illustrator. Her name is Lea Embelli and I think she is amazing! All the images are hand drawn! I find that to be truly wonderful. There is so much detail in the images and I can only guess that it must take her forever to do one illustration. If you were wondering why it takes so long for the Petunia Garfunkel books to get published – that is the reason. But, I think Lea is worth the wait and I want to continue working with her.

I trust that this book is a good start to a life of being helpful.

Many thanks. [amazon-button label=”Add to Cart”]